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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379697">See written on my heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylapislazuli/pseuds/ladylapislazuli'>ladylapislazuli</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, Gift Fic, M/M, Post-Canon, Trans Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:41:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,394</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylapislazuli/pseuds/ladylapislazuli</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“What have you done this time?” Felix says.</p><p>He rounds the changing screen. Dimitri is almost entirely stripped down, gloves and socks and shirt all strewn across the floor. Only his trousers and his chest binding remain.</p><p>“I think I am stuck,” Dimitri says.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>161</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>See written on my heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was written for @kairoskairo as part of the #ASSHolidayExchange. I really hope you enjoy it!</p><p><b>CONTENT WARNING:</b> This fic contains references to injuries acquired through unsafe chest binding practices (specifically, cracked/broken ribs). Bind safely out there, kids!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Felix is still getting accustomed to having a key to Dimitri’s chambers.</p><p>He climbs the stairs earlier than usual. Lets himself in the locked door waiting at the top, no knocking, no waiting for entry as would usually be the case. </p><p>“You need no permission,” Dimitri had told him when he gave him the key, smiling one of those smiles that always made Felix’s stomach do something funny, and Felix had walked away before Dimitri could say anything more.</p><p>He took the key, though. And now he slots it into the lock, trying not to think of how strange it feels, though by rights it is no different from any other key.</p><p>When Felix opens the door, he sees Dimitri's heavy cloak strewn across the bed and an ornate overcoat crumpled in a heap on the floor, as though both garments had been thrown in the direction of the mattress but only one had landed in its intended place. Dimitri’s boots appear to have met the same treatment, Felix stepping over one as he shuts the door, spotting the other abandoned in the middle of the room. Dimitri himself is nowhere to be seen, but Felix hears what sounds distinctly like a curse word from behind the changing screen.</p><p>Felix’s eyebrows rise. He says, sharp, “I’m here.”</p><p>A crash. A muffled yelp, followed by <em>another</em> bitten-off swear word. Dimitri doesn’t swear often. Never does it when a situation actually warrants swearing, like when a battle is turning south, or he receives tragic news. He saves his bad language almost exclusively for childish fits of temper, like when he’s running late and can’t find matching socks, or when an ill-advised attempt to fix an antique wardrobe goes awry and he drops a heavy piece of wood on his bare foot.</p><p>Dimitri pokes his head around the screen. His shoulders are bare, and his mouth is fixed down in a grimace.</p><p>“Give me a moment,” he says, and disappears again.</p><p>Felix folds his arms. Exhales slowly. “What are you doing behind there?”</p><p>“It <em>is</em> a changing screen. I believe you can guess,” Dimitri says, irritable, his sarcasm an even bigger clue than his swearing.</p><p>Felix’s face twitches. He considers, very briefly, turning right around again, because he and Dimitri are like fire and kindling when one of them is in a temper.</p><p>But they are getting better at it. Felix reminds himself of that. They have made an <em>agreement</em> to get better at it, and Felix does not make such promises lightly.</p><p>(Felix hasn’t seen Dimitri all day, either. That, more than anything else, stays his feet.)</p><p>“Do you need help?” he says.</p><p>“No, I am quite all right.” Dimitri’s voice is pitched a little too low, barely containing the bite of his frustration. He seems to remember himself a moment later. “Thank you.”</p><p>Felix rolls his eyes, but leaves him to it. He removes his own cloak. Briefly considers positioning Dimitri’s boots in their proper place by the door before he shoves that horrifying thought away.</p><p>He is not <em>tidying up</em> after Dimitri. He isn’t that far gone yet. </p><p>More rustling behind the changing screen. Another bitten off curse word before, with a frustrated noise, Dimitri gives up.</p><p>“Felix, can you help me, please?”</p><p>“What have you done this time?” Felix says.</p><p>He rounds the changing screen. Dimitri is almost entirely stripped down, gloves and socks and shirt all strewn across the floor. Only his trousers and his chest binding remain.</p><p>“I think I am stuck,” Dimitri says. Slowly, with an air of obvious reluctance, he turns to show Felix his back. Namely the mystifying ball of knots and straining ties that Dimitri has somehow created in his attempt to remove his chest binding.</p><p>Felix is aware, after a moment, that his mouth has dropped open. <em>Stuck</em> is an understatement. Felix knows how the ties are supposed to look – orderly lines tightened one by one with the ends tucked neatly away. </p><p>“I think I did it up wrong this morning,” Dimitri says. He does like to state the obvious – Felix can <em>see</em> that. “It’s these new strings. I cannot do the wretched things up on my own.”</p><p>And now he has made the situation worse in his fumbling attempts to undo the mess.</p><p>“You kept breaking the other ones,” Felix points out. He sighs. Assesses the damage. “Go sit on the bed.”</p><p>There’s no way Felix is getting any of that undone in a hurry. There’s metal woven into those ties, specifically to stop Dimitri from snapping them whenever he pulls the binding tight or gets too impatient as he undoes the knots to take it off again.</p><p>Dimitri pads over to the bed in bare feet with his shoulders sagging. Muscular shoulders, honed by long years of lance-work, tapering into a tiny waist and well-defined rider's thighs. Felix finds himself admiring the shape of him before he remembers what he is supposed to be doing. Dimitri settles himself down on the bed with a resigned sigh, baring his back to Felix. Trusting him utterly.</p><p>Felix’s stomach does something strange. It often does around Dimitri.</p><p>“Let’s hope the damage isn’t permanent,” he says, settling in behind Dimitri.</p><p>Dimitri has broken a lot of his chest bindings, a combination of his immense strength and his clumsy hands. Even before the bindings, when they were boys, he used to do much the same to his shoes. Tightening the laces so much by accident he'd make himself cry. This particular chest binding is the latest attempt to provide adequate reinforcement against His Royal Majesty’s longstanding impatience with the simple act of getting dressed in the morning.</p><p>(It could be worse, Felix reasons. Dimitri favours simplicity, practicality and above all else <em>speed</em> in his dress. Which, while still leading to some mishaps, is better than the alternative. It could be much worse. He could be a peacock like Sylvain.)</p><p>Close examination of the binding gives Felix some hope for its survival. The fabric is straining, ties pulled so taut they threaten to snap, and some of the knots look particularly difficult, but nothing has broken yet.</p><p>"Can you even breathe in there?" Felix asks.</p><p>"I think I accidentally tightened it when I was trying to get it off," Dimitri says, which is as good as a <em>no</em>.</p><p>A flare of alarm courses through Felix before he shoves it down. Dimitri is red in the face and clearly uncomfortable, but he does not appear to have hurt himself. Felix is not a worrying sort, either. He refuses to be.</p><p>(He has a sinking suspicion that he is becoming one anyway, as a consequence of selecting a partner who is, to put it mildly, brash. Just last week he stumbled upon Sylvain and Dimitri right before they attempted to jump from Dimitri's office window to the roof of the building below, and neither of them could adequately explain <em>why. </em>Dimitri, at least, had looked chastened when Felix pointed out the folly of this particular endeavour. Sylvain just laughed.)</p><p>Fortunately, the chest binding is a clever thing. Made specifically for Dimitri, fitted to his upper torso and all the way down his ribcage, strong enough to flatten his chest but flexible, safer and more effective than the rough bandages he used during the war. It has been engineered in such a way that he should, hypothetically, be able to get it on and off independently with a little time and patience, his considerable strength factored into its construction. It was designed precisely because Dimitri has, in fact, broken his own ribs before. He grew out of his teenaged binding but didn’t have the means to replace it during those long years on the run, and he hurt himself.</p><p>Dimitri would tell Felix if he cracked a rib, now. He would. It is another one of their agreements.</p><p>Felix gets to work. The first knot takes several laborious minutes of picking before Felix sees any visible progress. It took the brunt of Dimitri’s pulling, and it takes Felix several more minutes of dedicated attention before it finally comes free and he is able to loosen some of the strings.</p><p>Dimitri sighs with relief. “Thank you, Felix, truly. I am sorry to trouble you. You must have had a long day already.”</p><p>Felix just grunts. He did – he’s been riding all over the city chasing up one errand after another. </p><p>(He was mostly impatient to get back to the palace and see Dimitri, not that he has any intention of saying so. But Dimitri was already gone when Felix woke this morning. Felix hates that.)</p><p>The second knot isn’t much easier than the first. Dimitri confused the ties while dressing this morning – it is matched to the wrong tie on the other side, and got tangled amongst the other knots. Felix’s hands are already tiring. He takes a break, huffing, shaking his hands out.</p><p>“This is ridiculous,” he says. “You’ve made a complete mess of it.”</p><p>Dimitri droops. “I am sorry.”</p><p>Felix didn’t mean it as a criticism. Meant more to explain his slowness than anything else, though Dimitri gets that guilty hang to his head, shoulders tensing. Felix drops a kiss to the warm, scarred skin of Dimitri’s shoulder, conciliatory. Flushes when Dimitri jolts in surprise, clearly not expecting the gesture of affection, but presses a second kiss to his shoulder before he goes back to his task.</p><p>He isn’t good at talking. The intricate dance of battle is his expertise, where he thrives and lives and <em>wins</em>. Dimitri knows him. Dimitri is, in some ways, much the same, a warrior even before he is a king.</p><p>But he doubts himself more than Felix does. Doubts what they have together, this thing forged from the broken pieces of their childhood friendship, remade into something entirely new. And Felix doesn’t know how to explain what Dimitri means to him, not to Dimitri, not even to himself.</p><p>The best he can do is get back to work. Slowly undo the mess Dimitri has made, little by little, tie by tie.</p><p>It takes a while. Dimitri is shifting around by the end of it – not out of impatience, but discomfort. Felix refrains from telling him off, though it is a near thing, biting his tongue only because Dimitri must truly be uncomfortable to be wriggling around so much and Felix is almost finished anyway. With some deft manoeuvring Felix convinces the last of the knots to come undone, and Dimitri is finally able to get his chest binding off.</p><p>He groans as it slips over his head. There are indented red lines across his back despite the silk panel meant to prevent the ties biting into his skin – it is of limited use when faced with Dimitri’s strangling, impatient grip. Felix rubs the marks with his hand. No skin broken. Some minor bruising, perhaps, but that is all. No lasting harm done.</p><p>“Ah, that is better,” Dimitri says. He rubs at his chest where the bottom of the binding dug in, and though Felix cannot see his face he can imagine him wincing.</p><p>It is almost strange, that Felix knows him so well. Dimitri flexes his shoulders, stretching out, getting comfortable now he is free of his binding, and Felix just watches him. Watches the candlelight play across his skin, the scars ripple across the muscle of his back, the fine ends of his hair dance across the tops of his shoulders.</p><p>Those ends curl up when Dimitri is freshly bathed. Felix wonders if anyone else knows. Wonders why it matters to him, knowing it at all.</p><p>Dimitri turns to look at Felix over his shoulder. “You are quiet this evening.”</p><p>Felix jerks out of his reverie. Feels his cheeks heat, but still arches a brow. “I was concentrating on the knots.”</p><p>“Ah. Of course.” Dimitri gets up, pulling a clean nightshirt over his head before he goes to tidy the rest of the clothing he so rudely tossed about his bedroom.</p><p>He is always like this. Quick to cover himself. He doesn’t mind Felix seeing him without his binding, but he <em>does</em> mind Felix getting an eyeful of the worst of his scarring. The scars on his back, and belly, and forearms. The scarring beneath his eye patch that, despite months of courting, Felix has only seen a handful of times. As though Felix has not seen his share of battle wounds. As though Felix does not <em>have</em> his share of battle wounds.</p><p>His shyness of his scars makes no sense to Felix. But being with someone, he supposes, is finding out their strange idiosyncrasies and hidden insecurities. And Dimitri never laughs at the raised heels secreted away inside Felix’s boots or the innumerable potions he puts in his hair.</p><p>(Dimitri swears Felix’s hair isn’t thinning. He absolutely promises. But Felix isn’t so sure, and he is not laying idle to find out.)</p><p>“Are you staying the night?” Dimitri asks.</p><p>“I’m already here. Might as well,” Felix says, picking at the bedsheets.</p><p>He always gets awkward during moments like this. Sounds dismissive, even when he does not mean to. But Dimitri smiles. Climbs back onto the bed and, without any warning, wraps an arm around Felix's waist and rolls on top of him, pinning him down with his body weight.</p><p>“Hey,” Felix complains, out of habit more than anything. Dimitri is a tall man, and a heavy one too now that he is getting three square meals a day. But Felix likes the weight of him. Likes the smell of him, the crisp, clean smell of Dimitri’s favourite cologne.</p><p>(Likes it when Dimitri is openly affectionate, even if he is never quite sure how to respond.)</p><p>“May I?” Dimitri says with a meaningful look towards Felix’s lips, because he is also ridiculous. He already has Felix pinned down, and he had no qualms about doing that without permission.</p><p>(But Felix gets skittish about kisses, sometimes. Kisses specifically, not anything else. Felix never said it, but Dimitri noticed anyway. Minds his boundaries, even the ones Felix struggles to voice, cannot quite explain.)</p><p>Felix's stomach does that strange thing again. The thing it always does for Dimitri. The thing it only does for Dimitri.</p><p>He isn't good at talking. Never knows how to say it. So instead just he nods, and Dimitri leans down for a kiss.</p>
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